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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26364796">On Communication</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastdream/pseuds/lastdream'>lastdream</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Case Fic, KID's doves, Kaitou Kid Heist (Meitantei Conan/Magic Kaito), M/M, Relationship Negotiation, Riddles, kind of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:33:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,475</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26364796</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastdream/pseuds/lastdream</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For Shinichi, asking questions had always come second nature; the tricky part was untangling the Kaitou KID's answers.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan/Kuroba Kaito | Kaitou Kid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>259</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Lovely Pieces</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>On Communication</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Takame/gifts">Takame</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was a birthday present for <a href="https://takamei.tumblr.com">Caz</a>, a lovely person and a very dear friend &lt;3</p><p>I'm not sure how to tag these, but things people might find weird include: Shinichi being Conan-sized, Kaito's stage name being spelled KID, and the total absence of his real one. Size is just size as far as I'm concerned here (though <em>please</em> don't make yourself uncomfortable if it bothers you). I went back and forth for a while about the spelling thing, but my all-time favorite dcmk fic uses all caps, so meh. KID it is. </p><p>And now, gentle reader, without further ado~ <em>the story!</em>       O.&lt;</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kudou Shinichi blinked. Blinked again, to be sure of what he saw. Because, although it was perfectly true that he had come here to look for a criminal—an assassin and information runner codenamed <em>Martini</em>, rumored to be undercover at just the sort of not-quite-upscale restaurant that Mouri Kogorou happened to favor—Shinichi still couldn’t quite believe his eyes when one of the servers lifted a patron’s wallet in full view of the room. Her fingers dipped into the man’s rumpled suit jacket as she seated him, and by the time he opened his menu she was already flipping casually through his bills, cards, and receipts behind the minimal screen of her ordering pad.</p><p><em>I’m not here for you, </em>Shinichi thought with some irritation.</p><p>The man he actually suspected had just disappeared behind the kitchen doors, and if Shinichi lost time catching a petty thief when he was supposed to be identifying a crow killer, Haibara would kill <em>him</em>. No one else seemed to be watching, though, and Shinichi couldn’t very well just sit and watch a boldfaced criminal take some poor man for all he was worth—</p><p>Except, well.</p><p>Except that she wasn’t, for some reason.</p><p>It was clear that she could have, with those expert movements and that practiced deflection of the man’s attention. But as Shinichi watched, she tucked the receipts back into the place, patted the wallet closed, and slipped it into the man’s inside pocket again as she straightened his Western silverware arrangement. The man had never noticed it was gone. And in a room full of restaurant patrons, neither had anyone else, aside from Shinichi. What kind of thief would use that kind of skill to <em>return</em> easy money?</p><p>One answer came immediately, unbidden, and from a source other than logical reasoning. Shinichi tried hard to shut it down. He had no evidence.</p><p>And yet… he did <em>need </em>evidence, on one criminal or the other. His eyes flicked to the kitchens, from which the server who might be Martini still had not emerged. It was possible the man was going off shift even now, possible a vicious killer was intending to disappear that very night—and a disruption in the main dining room might draw him back out.</p><p>Suddenly, losing time catching a petty thief seemed like the only rational thing to do.</p><p>“Oji-san!” Conan chirped, nudging the somewhat inebriated Mouri’s knees under the table with the tips of his shoes. “Look at that pretty nee-san over there!”</p><p>The thief had just finished with her patron’s order, was now facing in their direction, and she was, indeed, very pretty. Slender, brown-haired, fine-featured, not <em>quite</em> demure in expression, but in a charming way that smoothed over the brief physical touches necessary to a pickpocket. She wore a tag on which was printed the name Ryouri Hina. <em>Cooking</em> and <em>edible greens</em>—that alone was almost evidence, Shinichi thought, though at least her family name was spelled with different kanji.</p><p>Mouri, still cackling over the pleasant surprise of Ryouri’s lovely face, was reading the same tag with a decidedly less subtle squint at her chest, and after a moment he loudly called out for “Hina-chan” to come and take his order, too. She was quick to head over; neither a true employee nor a thief posing as one could allow such a hair-raising racket to continue. Once in a while, predictability could be a terribly useful thing.</p><p>Conan put on his sweetest smile as Ryouri Hina drew up to their table.</p><p>“Can I get you something, sir?” she asked.</p><p>“Oho! You sure can!” Mouri laughed, still over-loud. “You’re so nice, Hina-chan, such a sweet young lady! I want some more beer, and a warm sake, and oh, oh maybe whiskey, or just another beer after that, and then—“</p><p>“I’ll get you another beer, sir,” Ryouri said firmly, lowering her voice steeply to encourage Mouri to do the same, and speaking decisively enough that he didn’t seem to notice he had been cut off—and cut back. It was impressive, if still not veritable evidence. But she was already beginning to turn her body toward the kitchens. Shinichi’s opportunity was vanishing. “Well, if that’ll be all, sir, I’ll just—“</p><p>“Ah, onee-san!” Conan called out. Was it telling that she’d tried to ignore him, or was it professional? In any case, he began, “I want—“</p><p><em>Clatter</em>.</p><p>He’d interrupted himself by knocking his silverware to the floor in a show of childish clumsiness, and now he switched the smile for his biggest pleading eyes.</p><p>“Oh no, onee-san, could you get me a new fork, please, <em>please</em>?” Conan whined obnoxiously.</p><p>“Of course,” Ryouri replied, in the same quelling tone she’d used on Mouri’s cackling. She took a perfectly ladylike knee in her working skirt to collect the fallen utensils, tucked them onto the tray of dishes she’d been carrying, and reached into her apron for a fresh set. Conan rubbed his fingers dry on his napkin.</p><p>Time to strike.</p><p>Quick as he could, before the server—poser or otherwise—could set the utensils neatly alongside the plate in front of him, Conan reached out with wide-spread fingers and took them from her hand. He lingered, a little, and Shinichi felt the lingering in his chest even if he really did need the data.</p><p><em>Okay. Data. Focus. </em>He only had a second before even the politest person would object to a stranger’s touch.</p><p>Ryouri had warm hands, a bit large for a woman, long and tapered fingers, thickened but soft-edged skin. Clean, smooth, and powerful. Callused especially on the grips of her palm and the tips of her fingers—which were tellingly brushed with latex—and with a slight irregularity to her index. It was the hand of someone who often used a trigger of some kind, who put full bodyweight and more on a single hand, who was dexterous and practiced dexterity, who wore gloves regularly and never left a fingerprint. The hand of an athlete, a marksman, a magician.</p><p>A thief.</p><p>Shinichi memorized the feeling, aware that the Kaitou KID knew just as well as he did what had just happened, and aware that in a moment it was going to be very strange if one of them did not speak.</p><p>He’d gotten evidence on one of his criminals. And he had a snap decision to make.</p><p>“Martini!” Conan called in a jarring sing-song voice, pronouncing the word not <em>matiini</em> but <em>maruchini</em>, as though a boy had been trying to sound out the English side of the drinks menu.</p><p>“Excuse me?” came Ryouri’s baffled tones.</p><p>“You can’t order alcohol, you dumb brat, that’s for grown-ups,” Mouri interjected.</p><p>“It certainly is,” Ryouri said quietly. Where Mouri couldn’t see, her deep black eyes were asking, <em>do you need help?</em></p><p>Shinichi knew he had made the right decision.</p><p>It wasn’t in the way KID was thinking, probably, but Shinichi did need help—he needed to get into the kitchens, or perhaps the back room, and <em>fast</em>, and he needed to do it without oji-san’s restraining grip on Conan’s collar. A good reason would do it, but Shinichi knew from long experience that without Ran’s firm stabilizing influence, whatever Conan said would go unheard.</p><p>A master liar in a position to make suggestions, however…</p><p>Conan screwed himself up to whine again, like he was even younger than he looked, and did his best to explain the situation.</p><p>“But I heard someone say that was really good here! One of the employees in the kitchen I think, and they would know, right? Right? I just wan’t to find out, oji-san, can’t I?”</p><p>“Huh? Of course they’re <em>good</em>, but you’re not getting one!”</p><p>“But oji-san!”</p><p>“<em>But no</em>, you little freeloader!”</p><p>“Oji-saaaaan, <em>pleeeease</em>?”</p><p>“I already said no, brat! Did you rot your brain with all that television you watch?”</p><p>“But oji-san, you change your mind all the time! And don’t you think your brain would be more rotted anyway, since you always watch the same Okino Youko programs every day?”</p><p>“You—you little glasses-wearing <em>brat!</em>”</p><p>“You old man!”</p><p>“Excuse me,” Ryouri said firmly. Black eyes narrowed in Conan’s direction briefly, as though to say <em>don’t you think you’re milking it, Meitantei?</em> before the expression smoothed into professional irritation with a server’s troublesome customers. “I’m afraid I can’t serve you anything like that, little boy.”</p><p>“See there!” Mouri declared.</p><p>And then, as though casting about for another option, Ryouri reached for the table’s menu herself—only to bump against Mouri’s nearly empty beer bottle as she turned, sending the final mouthful flying. There was so little left that it must have taken considerable skill to upset it at all, and yet those few drops landed squarely on the front of Conan’s white shirt.</p><p><em>You’re a genius</em>, he thought, realizing at once how he ought to play along and amazed at the simplicity of it. Without wasting a moment, he pulled his glasses off to clean them and switched on the tiny camera built into the arm. Then he replaced them and looked theatrically down at himself.</p><p>“Oh no, onee-san!” Conan exclaimed. “It’s Wednesday, I need to wear this shirt to school tomorrow!”</p><p>“Oh dear, I’m so sorry,” Ryouri sputtered. “And on white like that it’ll surely stain—“</p><p>“Eh, don’t worry about it, Hina-chan! Brats like him get messy all the time,” Mouri scoffed, but Ryouri had clearly been expecting the dismissal.</p><p>“For such a valued customer—and a famous one, too—isn’t there <em>anything</em> I can do to make up for this incompetence?” she asked solicitously. “I’m sure I have a bit of spot remover in my purse! Could I get that for you, sir?”</p><p>Mouri frowned. He liked the sound of her flattery, but, “I thought you were going to get me another beer, Hina-chan!”</p><p>“Oh, yes, of course, sir! I’ll have one sent right over. And I can—“ Then her face fell into a look of such consternation that Mouri seemed on the verge of getting up to reassure her. “Oh, but there’s no way I can use the stain remover in the middle of the dining room. We’ll have to… um, I’m very sorry again for my incompetence, sir, but…”</p><p>Ryouri trailed off, deeply embarrassed, visibly hoping that Mouri would fill in the rest of her sentence. And Mouri, though his processing speed was down from alcohol and a general aversion to talking about Conan, visibly wanted very much to say whatever that might happen to be.</p><p>“So you want to…” he began, and faltered. “Um. What do you suggest?”</p><p>“Could I take the boy to the staff room to get cleaned up, sir? Would that be all right?” Ryouri asked very earnestly. “I’ll have your beer sent over while we’re gone!”</p><p>Bingo. The promise of a drink, with his young charge neither present nor getting into mischief, was rapidly working on the man.</p><p>“Ah, the brat’s not—I mean, if he goes with Hina-chan, he won’t… Uh, go ahead and take him, I guess?”</p><p>“Thank you very much, sir! And I’m sorry again for my terrible mistake!” She bowed, twice, and then turned toward Shinichi, who flicked her exposed knee before hopping down from his seat. <em>Don’t you think you’re milking this, KID?</em></p><p>And then Ryouri was leading Conan away, taking him by a somewhat circuitous path so that his glasses could get a good look at anyone who might be in the plating area as the kitchen doors swung open. <em>There</em>. He didn’t have time to observe more than a few details himself, but he knew his lenses had gotten a clear picture of the man shrugging out of his apron. Haibara would be pleased. Ryouri deposited her tray and had a beer sent out. A few meters further on was the staff room; she glanced in before pulling Conan after her, then silently shut and locked the door in a single movement. Finally alone, they both looked at each other a little more honestly.</p><p>“Thanks, KID,” Shinichi said, and KID showed him a flash of his real, manic smile in return.</p><p>“For our friends in black? Anytime.”</p><p>He—now, in private, KID’s voice and movements had truly shaken off the act of femininity—made his way over to the employee lockers and rummaged briefly through the one on the end. After a moment he came back, apparently empty-handed until the stick of stain remover flickered into being between his fingers.</p><p>“<em>Seriously?</em>”</p><p>“Of course! It’d be unprofessional to leave my excuses unsubstantiated, don’t you think? And anyway, you can explain while I work. If you want Akatsume-san’s locker, it’s the third from the left.”</p><p>Shinichi rolled his eyes but dutifully shucked the white shirt and handed it over. Glasses firmly in place, he went to rifle through the locker KID had indicated, not surprised for a moment that KID had observed which person he’d been photographing. Cocky or foolish, there was a large collection of papers inside, offering substantial clues to the killer’s safe house.</p><p>“Martini isn’t exactly a big fish,” he allowed as he showed each receipt to his lenses in turn. “Wetwork, intelligence courier, backup, once in a while, for something bigger… One of my associates confirmed that he was called to work a job out of this place—likely <em>not</em> a hit unless he’s particularly stupid, since his preferred MO involves blades, and the fabrication of, ah, alternative evidence, to hide his activities. Which this setting would make rather messy and obvious, I think.”</p><p>“And, on the other hand, this place is popular with the kind of people who might source his information, being so near the airport and yet quite lacking in surveillance,” KID supplied. Which was, itself, an interesting thing for him to know, but that was a riddle Shinichi would have to solve later. “You’re sure you have your man?”</p><p>“Almost entirely, though I admit the description wasn’t much to go on,” Shinichi said. “A young man, approximately one hundred and seventy centimeters tall, black hair and eyes, medium build, right handed…”</p><p>KID snorted and rearranged the fabric. “I see the problem.”</p><p>“I have an associate who can recognize him, so confirmation isn’t the problem. I’m more concerned by possibility that he works under someone who has… one of <em>your</em> talents.”</p><p>“Ah, of course. A martini is a mixed drink, not an alcohol.” Mostly gin, but part vermouth. KID ran both hands brusquely over the shirt one last time, then swept it around Shinichi’s shoulders with the unusual quickness and accuracy of a man who had practice quick-changing other people. It was strangely exciting for Shinichi, feeling those fingers dancing like lightning over his buttons and smoothing the lines of his collar.</p><p>Shinichi began to reconsider his indistinct future plans; after all, who but KID knew when the next heist would be? And right now…</p><p>“Allow me to put your mind at ease, Meitaintei,” murmured KID, closing the locker and turning Shinichi to look at him. “There has been no sign of disguise work on any of dear Hina-chan’s coworkers, either tonight or any other night I’ve dropped by. And with an appearance like that, I’m hardly surprised—no matter who he works for.”</p><p>“And you’re sure of that?” Shinichi asked in a matching undertone. “She’s very talented.”</p><p>KID’s smile widened, and for a moment those black eyes almost seemed another color entirely, proudly meeting Shinichi’s straight on.</p><p>“I am certain.”</p><p>Not her, then. Shinichi breathed a sigh of relief.</p><p>The next moment his heart was stuttering again as KID scooped him swiftly into the air and caught him on one hip, like a child, with both arms around him. The touch of their hands and the fleeting sensation of dressing had been no preparation for contact like this—like they hadn’t had since the last time they’d flown together. And that had been an emergency.</p><p>“KID, <em>what the hell,</em>” Shinichi gasped out.</p><p>“You get such a low angle most of the time,” KID said, teasing. “I thought we’d get a better look at your man before I return you to your table. He’s on his way here, after all.”</p><p>“Well, fine…”</p><p>Shinichi hoped against hope that KID would attribute his reaction to simple surprise. Or, even better, to the likely proximity of a seasoned and brutal killer-for-hire. Which he was supposed to be focusing on anyway. KID apparently was. But Shinichi had to admit, glancing toward the staff room’s mirror, that if he slouchedjust so, and KID’s arm angled to obscure the length of his body, he really did look small enough to be caught and carried like this. And it <em>did</em> give him the height to get a clear headshot. All the same, though—</p><p>“You could have just taken my glasses,” he pointed out.</p><p>“Nonsense! Everyone knows Hina-chan doesn’t wear glasses,” said KID, very reasonably. Perhaps more reasonably than was necessary. Shinichi groaned but allowed it.</p><p>KID unlocked the door, silently once again, and brought Shinichi back out to the hallway. Immediately they saw their suspect, heading toward the staff room himself to collect his things on his way out—but he wasn’t alone. Beside him was another young woman Shinichi recognized as the hostess from the restaurant entrance, and she stopped dead at the sight of Conan. After a good four seconds of staring, she demanded,</p><p>“Ryouri-san, what are you <em>doing</em>? Is—is that a patron’s child? You know we can’t allow customers back here!”</p><p>Ryouri tightened her grip a little, and Conan smiled broad and innocent.</p><p>“Just a minor emergency, Ikari-san. I could hardly let one of our most important guests leave unsatisfied, not without seeing to the problem <em>personally</em>,” Ryouri replied smoothly, with a subtle shudder. The threat of a greater offense, thankfully averted, immediately proved the correct angle of attack for the hostess.</p><p>“Oh! Well, I suppose, if that’s the case…” Ikari hesitated.</p><p>“It is!” And then, smiling with almost undetectable caprice, Ryouri added, “And anyway, I couldn’t have the little boy back here alone! Who <em>knows </em>what sort of trouble he’d get into without me?” Conan pinched her on the soft underside of her arm, out of view. It was satisfying to watch her force the beginnings of a wince into a convincing smile as she answered herself, “<em>Huge trouble</em>.”</p><p>Conan just grinned wider.</p><p>“Well, I’m glad you took care of things,” Ikari said finally. “Just don’t do it again!”</p><p>“Thank you, Ikari-san. Good-night, Akatsume-san.” Ryouri set Conan down and bowed briefly to each of them, and then took Conan’s hand to lead him back to the table.</p><p>Once in the clear, mission complete, Shinichi shut off the recording function of his lenses and felt the whole of his attention drawn to the fact of this strange, accidental meeting. Less than ten minutes had passed. Less than ten minutes ago, he had made a wild assumption and devoted himself entirely to memorizing this hand in the few seconds he’d thought he had; now, his target had been handed to him, and more data was coming in than he could rationally process.</p><p>Some of it, of course, was processed irrationally. Much of it.</p><p>“Your old man hasn’t left, has he?” KID asked, speaking with his own words but in Ryouri’s inconspicuous voice, and Shinichi jumped. He looked up to find that the table was, indeed, apparently abandoned, and groaned to remember Mouri’s predictable behaviors yet again.</p><p>“No, he’s not <em>that</em> bad,” he answered. “The beer just goes right through him, and with no one around for him to micromanage… I’m sure he’ll be back from the bathroom in a few minutes.”</p><p>“Ah, I see. Well, it’s been fun, but this is where I leave you—“ KID’s fingers flashed, and something small and plastic appeared, “—with a parting gift.”</p><p>“What’s this?” A flash drive, obviously, but that could mean anything.</p><p>“My own research on tonight’s B-shift. Hina-chan’s only covering for Saito-kun right now, you see. You might have gotten everything you need, but if not…”</p><p>Shinichi’s mind raced through the deduction. Ryouri Hina, who usually worked A-shift. This evening, when she would have been surrounded by people who were acquaintances, if that. People who wouldn’t know how she ordinarily looked.</p><p>“You lied about my glasses—just so you could carry me around like a sack of flour, I suppose?” he grumbled aloud. He’d known that was teasing, but <em>really.</em></p><p><em>“</em>Got it in one!” KID cheered with a blinding grin. “As expected of my Meitantei, hm?”</p><p><em>Great detective? </em>Shinichi snorted. As if KID hadn’t all but handed him the clues—</p><p>Oh. <em>Blinding</em>.</p><p>KID had lied, and then told the truth indirectly, so that Shinichi would get his joke. Except that, knowing how KID thought—knowing, rather, that KID knew how <em>his</em> <em>Meitantei</em> thought, how Shinichi would go directly into the details and very possibly miss the first concrete fact—the whole scenario had to be the other way around. The joke had been set up <em>so that </em>it could be revealed later, in order to draw attention away from the magnitude of what KID must have been planning to give him from the moment they first entered the staff room; that was the only time he could have retrieved something he wouldn’t already have been carrying. He’d planned it, and felt embarrassed to have planned it, so he covered it with something easier. A distraction, tailor-made by the world’s most skilled magician.</p><p>And Shinichi thought, once more, about his own plan—a plan he’d pushed off “to the next heist” more than once, and been too embarrassed to make definite.</p><p>Right now… some things were definite. The rush of ten minutes’ cooperation, the fact that in one area, at least, they were allied, the knowledge that in this moment KID was hiding at least one feeling that they shared. In this moment, Shinichi was not without hope.</p><p>“KID,” he said softly, “thank you. Sit for a moment.”</p><p>After a second’s consideration, KID sat, tugging out one hairpin to allow long locks to fall into an artful style and producing a scarf to cover his uniform collar and tag. At first glance, especially if tonight’s staff didn’t know Ryouri well, he could easily be mistaken for another patron. Not to be bothered.</p><p>“What is it, Meitantei?”</p><p>Shinichi breathed deeply, wondering how to approach it. But then, what he had to say was actually very simple, wasn’t it? It was only the embarrassment that made him want to talk around the fact. He’d known what he wanted to say from the first, just as he’d known—</p><p>Ah. Oxygen.</p><p>“Do you know how I knew it was you?” he exhaled. “<em>Before</em> I confirmed, I mean?”</p><p>This line of conversation seemed to take KID aback, though the only sign of it was the brief hesitation before he said, “I assume there’s some flaw in the disguise.”</p><p>Well, that was just false modesty. Shinichi snorted.</p><p>“No, you don’t. There never is. Sera-san aside, anyway…” and Shinichi smirked when he saw the caught-out tic of KID’s mouth. “No. It was because I watched you pick a pocket.”</p><p>“Which one?” KID said blithely.</p><p>“Oh, ha ha. But I take your point—that isn’t proof.” Shinichi took in oxygen again. He said, “I didn’t know, really. In fact, I knew it was wildly unlikely that we’d run into each other like this. That you’d <em>let</em> us run into each other at all. And yet… my first assumption was that it <em>was</em> you. I later confirmed my assumption logically, of course, which you know, but, KID—“</p><p>Breathe. Pause. He closed his eyes for a moment, both to concentrate and to give KID a moment of privacy from the detective’s gaze.</p><p>“KID, my logic has an emotional bias. With regard to you.”</p><p>Eventually, Shinichi couldn’t resist looking up any longer, and found that it was a damn good thing KID had thought to deflect the staff’s scrutiny, because the thief was barely even trying to play his role anymore. He was just watching Shinichi, visibly thinking with the quickness and energy that only he could. He probably understood. He might know the last time Shinichi had admitted to such a troublesome distraction. But Shinichi couldn’t bring himself to ask the question any more clearly.</p><p>“Meitantei,” KID said at last. Nothing followed.</p><p>“I understand that the situation is—complicated—and I know I look—“</p><p>Shinichi stopped dead, cursing the sight of Mouri heading back from the bathrooms. Earlier than expected, maybe, or maybe Shinichi had just miscounted in his nervousness. Had this been the wrong moment, after all?</p><p>Whatever was showing on his face, KID seemed to read it plainly, and his preoccupied regard was put away as quickly as the scarf around his neck. In an instant Ryouri was on her feet again, uniform righted and hair neatly pulled into a dress-code twist. The shape of her face was somehow softened and made bland on a level that was purely expression, a change that was difficult to notice at all. The disguise was ready.</p><p>Yet Ryouri’s back was toward Mouri, and she’d moved her body directly into his line of sight when she stood. It was, for them, almost like privacy. For ten last precious seconds, Shinichi could look right through that false face and see KID.</p><p>He hoped KID could look through Conan, too.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>That night, Shinichi sorted through his recordings carefully. Stills from Akatsume’s locker, with each receipt legibly in focus; that last, clear image of the man’s face; a brief clip of motion as he’d removed his apron. A wealth of detail shots, from KID’s flash drive, filling in gaps in Shinichi’s logic he hadn’t even known he’d neglected.</p><p>Once Shinichi had double and triple checked each photograph for anything incriminating, he sent the relevant files on to Haibara, and to Subaru, who would be taking point next.</p><p>KID’s two real smiles, he kept for himself.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>After school on Thursday, Shinichi found himself at the park with the Shounen Tantei, as usual, winning a game of three-on-one soccer that was more like a lesson. Haibara—also as usual—had managed to slip away about an hour ago, and was even now working through Akatsume’s receipts with Subaru, deducing the location of the safe house. Part of Shinichi resented that they were moving against Martini without him, but the rest felt surprisingly free lying low from the crows. The park was lovely in the cool afternoon, the physical activity was excellent for clearing his mind, and for some anxieties, at least, a distraction was the best palliative one could ask for.</p><p>The distraction didn’t last long, however.</p><p>Halfway into their third match, Shinichi abruptly stumbled over an easy side-foot kick, blinded by a flash of light. The kids stopped running and laughed uproariously as he picked himself up and wobbled back into the position he’d fallen from; the sun was westering, but with his feet <em>there</em> and his arms out <em>so…</em> had his watch really been at the right angle to catch it like that?</p><p>Shinichi saw fluttering white out of the corner of his eye, felt a sudden pressure on top of his head, heard the kids’ laughter reach new heights—</p><p>Well, he hadn’t really expected it to be a coincidence, anyway.</p><p>“Hi again, KID,” he murmured.</p><p>The dove that had taken advantage of his distraction cooed. In a moment it had settled itself into his hair, seemingly unbothered either by his sweaty cowlick or by the increasingly enthusiastic calls of the children, who had taken only a second longer than Shinichi to realize just who must have interrupted their soccer game. He reached up and gingerly felt around his scalp, wary of pecking, and discovered the tiny rolled paper attached to one of the bird’s legs.</p><p>“Okay, message received,” he said. The dove didn’t move. “Job well done… I’m sure he needs you back now, Hato-chan… come on, get off!”</p><p>The dove just cooed placidly and began to groom his hair.</p><p><em>Well, fine then. </em>Shinichi turned his attention to the delivery itself just as the Shounen Tantei drew near, bottling their lingering giggles in the face of heist excitement. Once unrolled the note was about the size of a playing card, with a neatly printed message on one side and the thief’s usual smirking signature on the other—along with a messier scrawl that read <em>Best of luck!</em></p><p>“Aww, Conan-kun, you got your KID-card special delivered!” Ayumi said, sounding jealous and leaning in to peek over his shoulder. “And that’s his <em>handwriting</em>, look!”</p><p>“He does them all that way. The police station probably already has a copy…”</p><p>And yet. KID certainly didn’t send <em>all</em> of them with overly-affectionate doves; most didn’t even reach human hands until the thief had gotten well away. And Shinichi would bet money that they didn’t all come with a cheeky, last-minute wish for good luck. Was KID <em>doubting </em>his abilities, now that he’d confessed a weakness? Or was it something else?</p><p>Suddenly feeling the weight of his audience, Shinichi flipped back to the message side and read aloud:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Hidden claws will guard a hide like gold</em>
</p><p>And an unseeing watch cannot be deceived.</p><p>What is my true desire?</p><p> </p><p>Shinichi’s first thought, dumbly, was that it had been a long time since the Kaitou KID had sent anyone a riddle like this. As entertaining as the little <em>Be there at 8, dare you to stop me</em> notes could be, this was in another league entirely. His second was that this riddle must have taken time, and serious thought; it wasn’t the kind of thing KID would send as an insult.</p><p><em>Something else</em>, then.</p><p>Keeping half an eye on the full-leafed evergreen trees, and on the tall buildings that looked over the park, Shinichi dug the rest of his knife-sharp focus into the words of the note. From the first line, <em>hidden claws </em>and <em>hide like gold</em> stuck out to him as animalistic terms… as well as a near pun in English. So, the answer to the riddle had to involve an animal with an English name, written in kana, and, he suspected, very likely one with protractile claws. A <em>raion</em>.</p><p>“Ayumi-chan,” Conan began, grateful to have research help while he thought, “are there any gems associated with lions in Tokyo right now?”</p><p>“I’m on it, Conan-kun!”</p><p>And before the others could feel left out, he added, “Genta-kun, what’s the current phase of the moon? Mitsuhiko-kun, what are the hours of the closest museums?”</p><p>“I will tell you in a minute!” Mitsuhiko declared.</p><p>The dove gave a coo of encouragement from Shinichi’s hair.</p><p>Now, what came next? <em>Like gold </em>was written <em>kin no you… </em>and as gold was only weekday kanji present, that probably indicated <em>kinyoubi</em>, meaning Friday. But did that refer to tomorrow, or a week from then? <em>Hide</em>, on the other hand, was written <em>kawa, </em>spelled out in kana when it ordinarily wouldn’t have been… which hinted again at the English homophones… and which could be a nudge toward a second pun on <em>kawa</em>, meaning river. Depending on the museum details, that phrase gave him a possible place and time.</p><p>Moving on to the next line, Shinichi found the phrasing a bit more opaque. <em>Unseeing watch</em> was undoubtedly KID’s jab at the Task Force that never managed to catch him, but that had to be a secondary interpretation… unless it were a description of his plan, which he did sometimes offer just to make things interesting for himself… But <em>unseeing</em> could also refer to literal blindness, or to an object or creature which was simply unsighted to begin with. A statue of a lion might suit there… though it didn’t seem to <em>see through deception</em> or anything like that… Had the kids gotten far enough to fill in any of his gaps?</p><p>“Today’s moon is a tiiiiny crescent, Conan-kun!” Genta announced, as if in response. “And tomorrow’s a new moon… Doesn’t KID like full moons? There isn’t one for two weeks!”</p><p>Tomorrow, then. A new moon could be <em>blind</em>.</p><p>“He does…” Conan agreed with Genta. “Maybe there’s a special reason KID chose this one?”</p><p>He shut down yet another dumb first thought: that their meeting last night might have altered the thief’s timetable. Even the Kaitou KID needed time to prepare.</p><p>Ayumi spoke up next.</p><p>“There <em>is </em>a big lion gem, but, um… if KID steals this one, I don’t think he’ll give it back…”</p><p>“Ayumi-chan, what do you—<em>ah</em>.”</p><p>What she had found was the Lion’s Fang, an enormous yellow topaz set in gaudy yellow gold, showing neither priceless treasure off to advantage, and making both appear, even to Shinichi’s untrained eye, rather unfortunately sickly. He knew KID would want to reset that gem in a heartbeat. Which might well be the thief’s intention, of course, but he hadn’t hinted that direction in his note. Rather than <em>this</em> lion—Shinichi rewound his train of thought—if there were another lion that <em>cannot be deceived</em>…</p><p>“Ayumi-chan, try searching for a sphinx instead.”</p><p>Mitsuhiko gave an inarticulate yell.</p><p>“Mitsuhiko-kun?” Ayumi said as she turned to him with concern. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“<em>Ah!</em>” he shouted again, making the dove squawk and ruffle with irritation. And then he explained, “It’s—it’s a riddle-lion! A sphinx is! It has a lion body and wings and a person head and if you get the riddle wrong it <em>eats you</em>—“ the boy stopped to shudder— “and it’s made of gold too, and it has a big gem, and <em>it’s right here!</em>”</p><p>Conan caught hold of Mitsuhiko’s waving wrist so that his phone would stay still enough to read, and found the website of the Haido Museum, which happened to be located right on the Teimuzu River. The hours were posted at the top of the page, but much larger and more colorful was the banner announcing the short-term exhibition of the Sphinx’s Heart gem. A recent discovery, and only moderately famous. Set in the breast of a golden statuette of the creature, the deep blue iolite looked merely about the size of a 100-yen coin—much smaller than KID’s usual—but it did have decent clarity. It was also, read the side of the banner, on display that very evening for the last night of the exhibition.</p><p>Tomorrow the Sphinx’s Heart would be moved to the Beika Museum, down the same river.</p><p>“Nice work, Mitsuhiko-kun!” Conan exclaimed.</p><p>“Thank you Conan-kun!”</p><p>“Wait, let us get a look at the gem too—“</p><p>Shinichi ran through the information he’d gathered. He had the date, target, location… All that remained to solve was the exact time of the heist, but failing a clear indication from the characters in the note itself—like the <em>he</em> kana KID had once used to represent the hands of a clock—it would probably be related to the rise or set of the moon… a new moon, unlike other phases, was <em>only</em> present in the sky during the day, so moonset would likely fall during the Beika Museum’s operating hours. That was to say, well after the Sphinx’s Heart had completed delivery.</p><p>On the other hand, immediately after such a transfer the gem would much more likely be in a back room for examination than a showroom for display, and KID much preferred to perform for an audience. Still, moonrise would be very early for him…</p><p>“I suppose I’ll have to call Nakamori-keibu, he’ll find out what time the gem is being moved, set up security—“ Shinichi paused his train of thought abruptly, noticing that the conversation had gone very quiet and <em>his</em> audience was watching him expectantly. “What?”</p><p>“Come on, Conan-kun! You can do that any old time! When are you going to give us the Deduction Show?” Ayumi demanded, hands on her hips. Conan smiled encouragingly.</p><p>“You guys were a really big help, you know… I bet if you thought about it, you could even figure out most of the clues yourselves, now that you know some of the answers…” He was met by three flat stares, and the dove leaned down to peck him on the forehead in a way that almost seemed intelligent. He sighed. “Really, Hato-chan? Hn… well, let’s not break tradition.”</p><p>With perhaps more practice than performance, Shinichi ran quickly through the hints that pointed to sphinxes, rivers, and moon phases. It all seemed very obvious in retrospect, and even the kids didn’t stop to interrupt the “show” often—until, at the very last, he reached the date.</p><p>“<em>I knew it!</em>” Genta burst out. “<em>I </em>found out the new moon was tomorrow, and now it’s <em>kin </em>for gold! I was right!”</p><p>“But Conan-kun…” Mitsuhiko said, frowning hard, “when we were doing space, didn’t our sensei say something like… <em>kinyoubi </em>isn’t just named for <em>kin</em> like gold metal, it’s really for <em>Kinsei</em> the second planet?”</p><p>“Yeah, I remember that too!” said Ayumi. “<em>Kinsei </em>in English was called <em>Venus</em>, named for a pretty goddess of—Conan-kun, are you okay?” She patted him hard on the back, trying to save him from the way he’d almost swallowed his tongue.</p><p>“I’m fine,” he wheezed. “Just a cough, and—hah—that’s all of the clues, so… we should probably go home now… get ready, and all…”</p><p>“But <em>Conan-kun</em>!”</p><p>The kids grumbled back and forth for several minutes but eventually had to relent, and Shinichi sent them their separate ways with an agreement to meet up at the heist, if they were able to go—though that was fairly unlikely. Their farewells were boisterous; the quiet when they left was almost startling. Shinichi sighed deeply and reached one hand up to stroke KID’s dove.</p><p>It didn’t sit well, pushing the kids away, but it was an undeniable relief to be alone—or at least, comparatively unobserved—as he absorbed what Ayumi and Mitsuhiko had realized. They had both been absolutely right, of course. He shouldn’t have doubted, even for a moment, that the Kaitou KID perfectly understood what Shinichi had been telling him last night, and what he had been asking. And now… a thought from that conversation floated back… <em>go directly into the details and very possibly miss the first concrete fact—</em></p><p>Which was exactly what Shinichi had done, wasn’t it? <em>Best of luck! </em>indeed.</p><p>He returned his eyes to the riddle. The bulk of it did refer to the sphinx, as he had thought, but she was the speaker, not the solution. In fact, he’d hardly looked at the riddle’s actual question:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>What is my true desire?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Shinichi sucked in a breath. <em>My</em>. Not KID’s desire, which was itself Shinichi’s question, but the sphinx’s desire. The <em>Sphinx’s Heart</em>, so to speak. Though KID wouldn’t say it directly in a heist notice, Shinichi knew at once how much a gentleman thief must have hated to leave things unfinished the way he’d been obliged to last night.</p><p>The solution—what the sphinx wanted—was an <em>answer</em>.</p><p>And KID was promising one.</p><p>Shinichi breathed out again. For the first time since he’d started in on decoding, he allowed himself to look directly at the thoughts running in the back of his mind. This riddle <em>was</em> a kind of special attention, like the dove, and it <em>wasn’t</em> what KID had originally intended for this heist, if he’d intended anything at all for so small a gem. He’d want to watch it being read; he’d want to hear it being solved. As Shinichi made his own way toward home, he bent his steps past a tall, well-shaded evergreen the Shounen Tantei had been using for a soccer goal, and he said again,</p><p>“Message received.”</p><p>The dove fluttered up and disappeared among the branches.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Well, at least Shinichi wasn’t supposed to be lying <em>very</em> low. The next morning found him standing alone at the edge of what might have been a disaster area; with just one day to prepare, Nakamori and the Task force had gone into overdrive, fanatically surrounding the Haido Museum’s back loading bay with as many officers as they could muster, and packing a couple dozen more onto the deck of the small transport barge that would be carrying the Sphinx’s Heart down the river. Even if they could have been sharp before five in the morning, there was hardly <em>room</em> for the Shounen Tantei. Or for Haibara, who had headed out with Subaru even earlier in hopes of getting the jump on their man—a fact that made Shinichi decidedly less jealous than he’d expected.</p><p>Instead, he watched the sun begin to rise over the water, knew they’d be casting off soon, and counted fifteen minutes until the moon would rise mid-journey and the Kaitou KID would appear. Likewise determined to get a head start, he slipped quietly over the gangplank.</p><p>What Shinichi needed was a look around the set before the show began. KID’s chosen stage wasn’t an especially large craft, but the main deck would give him space to perform, being largely clear of crates and equipment, and the low railing would afford a good view to spectators on all sides—who were already accumulating in sleepy droves downriver. <em>So,</em> Shinichi thought, <em>I’ll just have to do my best to ruin it for them</em>. He shoved the railing hard, and found it easily sturdy enough for an acrobatic spring, and he scraped the sole of his shoe over a deck rough with high-grip surfacing. An idea of KID’s choreography was forming.</p><p>After his inspection of the foredeck, Shinichi turned to the wheelhouse. The small, enclosed space had already been thoroughly inspected, as Nakamori had decided to station himself, the curator Ito, and the gem itself inside the building, but it never hurt to look twice—or to look at the outside. Almost at once Shinichi noticed the thin edge of something black extending just past the wheelhouse roof. <em>Huh</em>.</p><p>“Hey, hey, officer!” Conan chirped, and the two nearest darted eagerly to his side, probably on Nakamori’s orders to help him. “Can you guys give me a boost? I can’t see up there!”</p><p>They linked their hands into a platform and held him up, high enough that he could see the wheelhouse occupants through the window, and then high enough that he could put out his hands to identify the black: another sheet of plastic grip surfacing. Shinichi slipped off his suspenders and clipped them to the flagpole, out of view of the window, just in case.</p><p>“You can let me down now!” Conan called. But halfway there, an odd sense of familiarity struck him. “Wait, wait! That man in there with Nakamori-keibu—is he the curator?”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s Ito-san,” one officer agreed.</p><p>“Poor guy’s been trying to get this transfer sorted for weeks,” the other despaired.</p><p><em>Of course.</em> A large man, moving nervously, wearing a suit he’d visibly worn several times without pressing… busy enough to keep important details of his work on his person… and stressed enough to go drinking on a Wednesday after the museum closed. No wonder “Ryouri Hina” had been quite willing to cover that shift.</p><p>“Do you have something, KID Killer?” the first officer asked. “Something that’ll help us finally get that ba—“ He choked as his partner elbowed him swiftly.</p><p>“<em>Bad</em> thief,” the second finished. Conan stifled his laugh.</p><p>“Just a few ideas,” he said modestly. “Keep looking up, okay?”</p><p>“Will do!” shouted both officers together.</p><p>“Thanks, you guys!” Conan grinned and skipped away to investigate the aft deck.</p><p>It would be foolish, of course, to be <em>too</em> sure of what KID was planning—that way lay the most humiliating of the thief’s traps—but evidence was evidence. By the time the ship cast off with the Sphinx’s Heart on board, just after five, Shinichi felt confident enough to stand in the center of the foredeck, shoes switched on and eyes eagerly roving the sky.</p><p><em>This time, I’ll catch you. I’ll </em>show<em> you who I am.</em></p><p>At first, their passage down the Teimuzu river was quiet; the water, the ship’s engine, and the early morning traffic added up to little more than mutters on the breeze. But these sounds were soon joined by the cheers of Kaitou KID fans, growing exponentially more common as they came in sight of the crowds along the bank, and by the increasingly loud squawking of the early-rising sea birds that circled the ship.</p><p><em>Circled?</em> Was that normal behavior?</p><p>Almost as soon as Shinichi took note of the birds, their numbers began to grow. More, many more surrounded their ship than any other Shinichi could see, and as he watched, he began to notice that not all of them were sea birds. Whether they had been there from the first or had just arrived, he couldn’t tell, but he was soon sure that many of those white wings actually belonged to doves. He checked his watch: three minutes to moonrise.</p><p>For three minutes the birds continued to multiply, more and more of them doves, their flight patterns more and more complex… and then the opening act began.</p><p>“Glider!” Conan called the alarm. “Wait, it’s gliders, plural!”</p><p>The Task Force officers, who had been watching the birds as though they were a vaguely threatening fog, came alert at once, peering intensely into the multitude. From one moment to the next, the flock’s strange, spontaneous rhythm had become a complex dance, led by a pair of white-winged gliders that flitted among them and danced as gracefully as any. The audience on the riverbank came fully awake and spotted them only a second later.</p><p>“KID!” came an echoing chorus. “KID-SAMA!”</p><p>“Which one are you, KID?” Shinichi said under his breath. Of course KID would have brought a diversion—Shinichi only had one soccer ball. But Shinichi also knew that whatever the second glider might be, whoever might be controlling it, there was no way their skills could be equal. KID’s own impossible reflexes would work against him.</p><p>And so would his tactics. Shinichi smirked as he measured the low angle of the sun, spotted the nearer of the two gliders, and took a new kind of aim with his watch.</p><p>The moment the reflected sun struck the glider’s pilot was obvious, if not quite as he had expected it to be; the dive turned with the barest stutter into a smooth roll to avoid the glare. When the doves followed automatically, it might almost have been practiced routine. But Shinichi could see the way the other half of the flock fell out of sync, following a glider that had been unable to make the same split-second adjustment to the choreography.</p><p><em>Got you! </em>He pressed his belt and sent the soccer ball flying.</p><p>KID’s glider rolled again, but Shinichi had led his shot expecting that. The strike was hard, direct, and clearly audible—he winced before realizing that his kick couldn’t be the only cause. No, the sharp <em>bang </em>and burst of smoke had been one of KID’s confetti grenades, evidently triggered by the impact. A flash of blinding yellow light followed. Visibility dropped to zero in an instant.</p><p>But that wasn’t the only data. A lack of splash meant that there were only two logical places for KID to land. Would it be the foredeck, or the wheelhouse? With no clear deciding factor, Shinichi kept his eyes toward the place where KID had vanished, listening to the oblivious fans cheer their idol’s fumble. Then, suddenly, the cheers turned to shocked gasps. Shinichi blinked colorful confetti out of his eyes and wished the blue smoke would clear faster—only to find that it <em>was</em>.</p><p>The opacity faded rapidly away, leaving the shapes of the deck and the circling birds crisp and definite, but a deep blue cast lingered over everything. It wasn’t the smoke. Even the sun had dimmed, now more like a white disc hovering over the horizon. <em>Impossible…</em></p><p>It was as though KID had caused evening to fall in an instant.</p><p>And there, at the ship’s bow, appeared the Moonlight Magician himself. It was hard to say how he had gotten there. He perched lightly on the very point of the railing, tipped his hat, and swept an elaborate and impossibly-balanced bow to greet his audience and his officers. His pure white regalia, backlit by what <em>must</em> still have been the rising sun, seemed to defy contradiction with some inner luminescence that made it glow as bright as ever. His grin was a crescent of light in his face, and his monocle flashed white.</p><p>Good. KID’s sense of lighting would help Shinichi aim.</p><p>“Ladies and gentlemen!” KID’s voice projected loud and clear, to carrying cries of approval from the riverbank. “Welcome to the matinee showing of the famous Kaitou KID’s performance!”</p><p>The Task Force had been stunned by KID’s entrance, and even more by the change in the sky, but at his words all two dozen of them got their feet under them again and charged. Shinichi’s clear shot disappeared behind a shouting, stamping wall. He waited. There was, after all, a nonzero chance that one of them would get extremely lucky and grab something solid—</p><p>“Such rudeness!” came KID’s chiding voice, from somewhere left of the dog pile. “When I heard that our esteemed Ito-san was selling off my dear Sphinx’s Heart, I knew right away what we had to do. Truly, what sort of a gentleman would I be if I didn’t set him free?”</p><p>
  <em>We? Him?</em>
</p><p>But KID’s theatrical despairing sigh was already turning into the quiet <em>hiss</em> of a sleeping gas canister. Shinichi stepped back and raised his watch once more. Any second now…</p><p>“Ah, that’s better,” KID said when the shouting had dwindled to nothing. This time his voice came from the right. “I always <em>do</em> say my poor officers don’t get enough rest.”</p><p>“I wonder why not?” Shinichi called. KID’s laughter echoed.</p><p>One by one the members of the Task Force who were still standing stumbled to their knees and lay down to sleep, while those who’d piled on the thief—or a plush dummy version of him, anyway—relaxed and settled themselves until they looked like nothing so much as a basket of puppies exhausted from playing with a favorite toy. Behind them, proudly front and center, stood the Kaitou KID.</p><p>“How nice to see you at last, Meitantei,” he said.</p><p>“Is it?” Shinichi asked, and he fired.</p><p>KID whirled to the side, dodging the dart and laughing manically.</p><p>“You do know how to make things fun!”</p><p>There were two darts remaining, and Shinichi was sure they both knew it; KID didn’t make it easy for him to take aim a second time. He flipped through the air, ducked low, spun so the white silk of his cape hid the exposed skin of his face. It was a gymnastic floor routine made improv, and the audience was cheering like it, too. Loud, fast, distracting. <em>Focus… </em>Even tracking every movement Shinichi couldn’t seem to hold a target at all…</p><p>Until the moment KID’s evasion led him to spring off the railing into a neat backflip, his upside-down face turned toward Shinichi for just an instant. He fired again. This time the shot came within millimeters—it took KID’s hat off.</p><p>But the thief’s reflexes were all but superhuman, and he twisted to land on the deck in a clean somersault, scooped his hat up mid-motion, and had placed it back on his head in an elegant salute by the time he’d returned to standing. The crowd went wild at the gesture. Wilder still, when KID raised both hands and beckoned. To his fans?</p><p>Shinichi had just readied his third and final dart when he was forcibly reminded that, upon arriving, Kid had said <em>we</em>.</p><p>Not KID and the other glider. KID and the <em>birds</em>.</p><p>In answer, the doves broke the endless circles and flew down to surround their magician like a cloud, or like a living extension of his cape. Shinichi’s shot was gone again, but this time he was distracted by the déjà vu of the sight. Were the doves just going to spirit KID away like they had once before? Was the heist, somehow, already over?</p><p>“You forget: I don’t repeat my tricks, Meitantei,” KID murmured. For the first time, his voice wasn’t pitched to reach the audience, didn’t carry beyond Shinichi himself. Then he was projecting brightly again, “Even if this trick is a lot of fun!”</p><p>KID ran across the deck so lightly his doves might almost have been carrying him, sprang up on the opposite railing, and launched into an impossibly high, graceful leap, staying airborne far too long and landing almost soundlessly on the wheelhouse roof. At a murmured word the doves scattered from him and vanished into the skies as though they had evaporated.</p><p>“And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time! The moment you’ve all been waiting for—“ KID announced with a swirl of his cape and another tip of his hat. He reached into the breast of his suit and pulled out something that looked metallic—</p><p>
  <em>Bang!</em>
</p><p>Another confetti bomb had gone off, this one with less color and more smoke, blinding everyone looking at KID. For five, maybe eight seconds, there was only sound. The roaring crowd, a sound like breaking plastic, and then the rattling of a steel door. When Shinichi could see again, Nakamori and the others in the wheelhouse were trying furiously to escape a control room that had clearly been locked. The ship was still drifting smoothly on to Beika Museum.</p><p>And the Kaitou KID was holding aloft the Sphinx’s Heart.</p><p>“—has finally arrived!” he finished with a wild smirk. “Beautiful, isn’t he?”</p><p>
  <em>He?</em>
</p><p>As KID twirled the iolite this way and that to throw sunlight in dazzling flecks, Shinichi realized that whatever he’d done to the sky was over, now. Pale blue dappled the thief’s suit, and his monocle flashed gold as he bent—to take his final bow. They had almost reached their destination.</p><p>
  <em>No! If it’s me, I won’t let you get away!</em>
</p><p>Shinichi began to run. KID met his eyes over the distance, just ten feet down, and for a split-second there was a dare in his crescent smirk. <em>You think you can stop me?</em></p><p>But that split-second was time enough for Shinichi to fire his last dart, which struck the glass of KID’s monocle and sent him flinching backwards. That bought Shinichi another second. He grasped his dangling suspenders and activated them in the same motion, flinging himself up past the level of the roof, up to KID’s reeling height, and then—</p><p>And then, Shinichi discovered in shock, he was landing on the roof, clutching the Sphinx’s Heart himself. It was small, even in his small hands. The blue gem was vivid.</p><p>“Hah, not bad, Meitantei,” KID said, leaping to his feet. It sounded as though he’d had the wind knocked out of him.. “But you still haven’t <em>caught</em> me…”</p><p>All at once, seeing the thief loom against the rising sun, Shinichi remembered the sheer difference between their bodies, KID’s vastly superior size and strength. Would KID think it too ungentlemanly to just tackle him to regain the gem? If he didn’t, if he lunged the way his posture threatened, there was no way Shinichi would be able to hold onto it on his own. His darts were all spent, and so was his soccer ball. There was nothing to kick on the bare roof.</p><p>Shinichi rolled to duck as KID flew at him, only to feel nothing worse than a brush of silk over his hair; KID hadn’t been aiming for <em>him</em>. No, he had launched himself over the side of the roof and caught hold of a thin streak of flashing light. A wire, stretching toward the shore. KID must have prepared it in advance, placed it such that it was only visible from this precise altitude over the river, and Shinichi—smaller and weaker though he was—had nearly caused him to miss his exit cue entirely. The ungraceful flapping of his escape was deeply satisfying.</p><p>Even though the thief <em>was</em> escaping. Even though, whatever Shinichi might have expected, he hadn’t received any answer he could decipher.</p><p>But apparently the show wasn’t over yet. On the high balcony of an apartment building on the waterside, the Kaitou KID regained his balance and turned, grinning, to address his adoring audience one last time. If it wasn’t true satisfaction, it was a very passable imitation.</p><p>“This has been a <em>lovely </em>morning! With such moments of thrill and delight, I know you all must have enjoyed my magic performance as much as I did! And now, ladies and gentlemen, fans and critics alike…” KID paused for dramatic effect, turning something shining and metallic in his hand. <em>Gold?</em> “Let’s meet again under the moonlight!”</p><p>The roar of the crowd rose to a fever pitch, and the bright object reflected still more brilliantly—</p><p>“Ow!” Shinichi hissed as the light struck his glasses. He really, <em>really</em> hoped this wasn’t going to become a thing between them. By the time he looked up, KID had circled and flown off stage left, and whatever he’d been holding with him.</p><p>Except, well.</p><p>Except that the Sphinx’s Heart was still in Shinichi’s hands.</p><p>He looked down at it to evaluate. Was it a fake? Had KID managed to switch it with a forgery in the few seconds he’d held the treasure? But when Shinichi checked it over carefully, he found the same deceptively fragile-feeling pure gold statuette, the same deep, clear blue of the real iolite heart. The genuine article. It was lighter in weight than he’d expected, just looking at it, but correct for the museum’s figures…</p><p>Eventually, he was forced to accept that KID really had left his heist’s target behind. Not only that—he’d left it with <em>Shinichi</em>.</p><p>Even as he savored the taste of victory, Shinichi was thinking fast. The strangest thing was not that the Kaitou KID would leave without his gem, as Shinichi hadn’t exactly left him a lot of options, nor was it his apparent equanimity as he did. KID’s acting was nonpareil. Novel as the situation was, all that did seem to fit the thief’s profile. What <em>didn’t</em> was that KID had chosen to lie about his loss, however tacitly, and show all the world that shining false trophy.</p><p>KID’s usual deceptions were clever, well supported, and hard to spot. Who benefited from a simple lie that Shinichi could expose in a heartbeat?</p><p>Well, <em>Shinichi</em> did.</p><p><em>Of course,</em> he thought, stunned. <em>Figures KID would answer a question with a question.</em></p><p>He could hardly have missed KID’s invitation: the jab at his <em>critic</em>, the unmistakable signal when he said <em>let’s meet again</em> and headed west away from the Beika Museum. And Shinichi could still reveal the full truth of this heist’s magic, hand the Sphinx’s Heart over to Nakamori, and turn up at KID’s chosen time and place anyway. The idea of sharing his victory and taking the thief’s inflated reputation down a notch was certainly tempting.</p><p>It wasn’t the only idea in Shinichi’s mind, though. Looking down at the treasure in his hand called up a clear image, composite of a dozen heists and confrontations, of KID on a windy rooftop somewhere, holding a brilliant jewel up to the full moon. Shinichi knew it wasn’t just his emotional bias that made him hesitate. KID had reshaped his own life to get those brief moments alone with his prizes, and the man Shinichi knew wouldn’t have done that for no reason. They had so many of the same secrets, after all. And KID was very carefully not requiring this of Shinichi; he had lied only to ask, to offer him the choice…</p><p>Shinichi weighed two unsatisfying courses of action, and took the third.</p><p>Moving quickly, he slipped the Sphinx’s Heart into the large inside pocket of his jacket, careful to keep it from catching the light again. He put his suspenders back on, recovered the dart that had ricocheted from KID’s monocle, finally dialed off the power to his shoes. When everything was as inconspicuous as he could make it, Shinichi settled on the edge of the roof to wait for the Task Force to wake up and help him down.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The rest of the day was a roil of expectation. Testimony had to be given; school had to be attended; homework had to be done before Ran would let him leave for Agasa’s. He was anxious to catch up with Haibara, who had been out of school all day with Subaru, but the sentiment was soon overwhelmed as she expounded on the events of the day.</p><p>“How many of these do you <em>have?</em>” he demanded as she passed over yet another photograph from the safe house. Martini himself had evaded Subaru, but it hardly mattered with these…</p><p>“Enough,” Haibara smirked.</p><p>They weren’t everything, of course—nothing could be <em>that</em> until Shinichi had worked his way much closer to the top—but they were evidence. Valuable links in the crows’ chain. They would bring him to other and bigger prey, soon enough.</p><p>And they were almost enough to tide him over until evening.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>By the time Shinichi climbed onto the roof of the Haido City Hotel at a quarter after six, having eaten hastily and given Haibara his excuses, he was exhausted and the daylight was failing, but his stamina was hitting a strong second wind. Anticipation was heady. He took in the elevated view of the city, knowing that he wasn’t alone, and thought it felt strange to observe this place under a red-golden sunset when it was always blue-white in his memories.</p><p>“Thanks for your help,” he said aloud. “I got good evidence today because of you. But you know, this isn’t actually where we met.”</p><p>“That really depends on how you look at things,” KID’s voice replied. A black-clad figure in a cap and monocle melted out of the shadows, grinning wryly. “The first time you shot at me. Here, you told me your name, and I told you mine.”</p><p><em>One of your names</em>, Shinichi adjusted silently. <em>And one of mine</em>.</p><p>It was a relief, every time, to think that KID knew. A thrill, to meet him with intention.</p><p>“To each his own, I suppose,” he said.</p><p>They had all night, theoretically, but at least one order of business was time-sensitive; the sun was sliding down into the skyline, the new moon only minutes behind. Shinichi tracked its position, just a few degrees to the right of due west, and then turned his critical eye back to KID. He pulled the Sphinx’s Heart from his inner pocket.</p><p>KID’s expression did not disappoint. His poker face cracked, one violet eye gone wide.</p><p>“I wasn’t testing you,” KID said very quickly.</p><p>Shinichi, not having been worried about anything of the kind, said nothing. He waited. When the silence stretched KID actually bit his lip in a show of nervousness, and said,</p><p>“But I am a thief.”</p><p>“And I’m a detective who looks like <em>this</em>,” returned Shinichi, shrugging. “I’m only doing what you did for me, and I’m not going to let you keep it. I’ll just tell Nakamori that I got around your trick but only realized I had the real gem in my pocket when I got home… he won’t wonder too much.”</p><p>KID, however, didn’t seem assuaged. He took another step forward, risking illuminating his face in the low-angled sunlight, and knelt to extend black-gloved fingers toward the gem. They both knew it would be a low and frankly <em>boring </em>trick to steal it away now, so Shinichi offered it easily and watched him take it, turn it over in his hands, examine the same minute idiosyncrasies Shinichi had found hours before. Shinichi had brought him the genuine article, of course. But when a set of jewelers’ tools were produced—</p><p>“Relax, Meitantei. I’m not doing anything that isn’t easily undone,” said KID.</p><p>“What <em>are</em> you doing?” Shinichi asked him. It wasn’t normal for KID to do anything to the gems he stole, unless he <em>always</em> finished this work before Shinichi arrived. Unlikely.</p><p>But KID didn’t answer the question.</p><p>“There’s no moon tonight,” he said instead. “I can’t check what I usually do. But say, for argument’s sake, that I <em>did</em> decide to keep this one. It’s the one I’m looking for! Mission accomplished! And now I’ll never give it back.”</p><p>“Now you <em>are </em>testing me,” Shinichi said. The thief laughed hollowly.</p><p>“No. I’m saying I don’t usually steal things I want to keep. But <em>today</em>… Hm. You always end up rearranging my plans. Didn’t you wonder, Meitantei, why I wanted this one?”</p><p>“Small, recent, rather insignificant… I assumed you were short on time.”</p><p>“Oh, you wound me!” KID’s laughter was real this time. “It was because of the <em>weight</em>. Surely you noticed that it’s much lighter than a statuette of this size ought to be. The finders assumed it was air inside, of course. A largely hollow cast, to cut down on the cost of gold. But my theory—which the Beika Museum intends to evaluate, by the way—is a little more interesting. You see, the density of gold is more than eight times that of iolite.”</p><p>“So, you’re saying—“</p><p>Shinichi didn’t finish his sentence; he didn’t need to. At that moment KID finished his work with the tools and vanished them, set his fingertips carefully around the circumference of the jewel, and pulled it out of its housing into the very last rays of the setting sun. And pulled, and <em>pulled</em>. KID’s sense of staging and suspense was breathtaking. Fully revealed, the stone was not, as Shinichi had first assumed, a common 100-yen sized piece. The true Sphinx’s Heart was like a crane’s egg of vivid, luminous blue.</p><p>No wonder the overall weight had been so affected. No <em>wonder</em> KID had wanted it.</p><p>And KID had wanted a moment alone with it, to check it, and had thought he couldn’t due to the lack of light. Maybe, maybe not. With the gem extricated from the surrounding gold, this was the perfect opportunity to test Shinichi’s plan. He took it from KID’s hand.</p><p>“Come on,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what you need the moon for, but I do know that we have about three minutes…”</p><p>The new moon was now just visible by earthshine, low in the darkening west-northwestern skies, and against it the Sphinx’s Heart gave a dull glitter. Nothing more than the streetlights below might have produced. KID came alongside him, looking skeptical.</p><p>“Meitantei, I’m pretty positive that point-three-percent illumination won’t be enough…”</p><p>“Maybe so,” Shinichi allowed. He turned the magnifying power of his glasses up to maximum and removed them, holding one lens between the falling moon and the gem. The glitter brightened a little, but he couldn’t see—well, anything. Whatever he was supposed to be seeing.</p><p>“Don’t turn around,” KID whispered in his ear, and then KID’s hand was touching his again, holding a second lens beside his, in order to intensify the weak light. A tiny clover charm swung from its edge. <em>His monocle must have a magnifying function too, </em>Shinichi realized wildly, somewhat short of breath at the thought of KID’s bare face only inches away.</p><p>“I won’t,” he said faintly.</p><p>It took a minute for them to adjust their focal distance properly, and then to turn the gem into the soft light beam, but they knew at once when they had it right: the blue iolite seemed to glow and changed dramatically to violet. They both inhaled sharply.</p><p>“Is that what you’re looking or?” Shinichi asked.</p><p>“No…” KID murmured back. “That’s just pleochroism. Quite lovely, though. And it <em>is</em> enough to tell me that this isn’t the one I’m looking for, after all.”</p><p>Busy stifling the bizarre urge to apologize, and still rather caught in the idea of KID’s face, Shinichi heard himself say, “It looks kind of like your eyes now, doesn’t it? I mean!” He backtracked, broke the lenses’ focus, and narrowly avoided a direct sight of KID. <em>Stupid, invasive detective—</em> “I just mean the color they are right now! I mean… I can’t <em>know</em>…”</p><p>“Don’t be embarrassed, Meitantei,” KID said, plucking the gem from his hand. The new moon had set, anyway. “You have excellent attention to detail. I admit I rather thought that, from the direct angle, the color looked like <em>your </em>eyes.”</p><p>They fell nearly silent as Shinichi willed his flush away; the soft clicking of stone on metal surely belonged to KID’s hands resetting the gem in its housing, apparently a faster process than the removal. Still Shinichi watched the dim sky without turning. He wouldn’t break the fragile thing that was KID’s trust, wouldn’t push for shallow truths when everything KID said sounded like the beginning of an answer. Soon there came a satisfied hum, a light hand on Shinichi’s arm, and the small weight of the Sphinx’s Heart dropping back into his pocket with its secret carefully restored.</p><p>Shinichi touched the real, solid treasure through his jacket. “Was it really just for the sake of argument, then?”</p><p>KID made an inquiring noise.</p><p>“What you said earlier… today, you stole something you wanted to keep.”</p><p>“Ahh. That’s not quite it. I didn’t, but I wanted to.” Ever light on his feet, KID glided past him to sit on the low wall at the edge of the roof, facing out. His blacks almost disappeared into the falling night, which was surely the intent; Shinichi followed, tucking his glasses away, but looked out in a different direction. KID sighed. “It was just an illogical passing thought…”</p><p>Something in his tone, or his phrasing, piqued Shinichi’s memory like a quotation. <em>Odd</em>.</p><p>“What was the thought?” he asked aloud.</p><p>The hesitation stretched until it seemed KID might not answer at all. But then—</p><p>“Well… you’re not so heavy either, Shinichi.”</p><p>The sound of his name hit him almost like a blow, the striking relief of knowing KID <em>knew</em> increased a thousandfold. His heart accelerated. Almost no one used <em>his </em>name to his face anymore, as it was safer and easier just to call him Conan, as he was <em>being</em> Conan more and more lately…</p><p>But he wasn’t Conan. And KID knew it. And KID… KID had chosen the Sphinx’s Heart for him, thinking of its color and its deceptive weight, thinking—he realized very belatedly—of an Egyptian sphinx that guarded fiercely against all evil, and of the Greek sphinx who outsmarted her opponents before she tore them apart. Whose most famous riddle, about a creature that walked in different ways over the course of a day, was solved by <em>the change in a man’s age</em>.</p><p>Hell, KID had probably thought he was being obvious, hadn’t he?</p><p>Looking back, Shinichi was sure KID had intended him to come to all of these conclusions along the way. To see himself in KID’s note, to recognize the color of his target, to understand at once when KID revealed the secret of its size. KID, who had planned all these things thinking of him, wouldn’t have accounted for just how much Shinichi <em>didn’t</em>. But that was all on Shinichi. He hadn’t considered himself as a factor in his own situation except when he couldn’t avoid it, and as a result had missed about half of what KID was telling him.</p><p>And hadn’t noticed until now the double meaning of that last remark: that KID had hardly needed to <em>wrestle </em>him to escape with the gem. Shinichi choked a disbelieving laugh.</p><p>“What, carry me off? And tarnish your good name?”</p><p>“Of course I didn’t <em>do it</em>,” KID snapped, and the laughter died at once. KID sounded like he’d spent the whole too-long silence thinking of something terrible; his tone was the undiluted version of his anxiety when he’d said <em>but I am a thief</em>, when he’d rejected what Shinichi had thought then was understanding. “But it was my first thought,” KID said now. “Predictable, huh? And it would have been much harder than <em>this</em> to give you back.”</p><p>He gestured in midair, just as he had released the Sphinx’s Heart. And this time, Shinichi did understand something.</p><p>“KID,” he said. “I didn’t spend… however long that was… realizing you were actually an awful person. Really!” he insisted when KID scoffed. He took a deep breath and integrated the facts as he spoke. “If you must know, I was… finally recognizing how much you think of me.” An awkward heartbeat. “That aside, you’re not obligated to say <em>yes</em>, of course; I know, again, that the situation is extremely complicated…”</p><p>“Meitantei—“</p><p>“Shinichi. I liked that.”</p><p>“Then you might as well face me for this.” KID ran over Shinichi’s scruples. “It’s dark now, anyway. I don’t want to do this without seeing you.”</p><p>Shinichi finally turned toward KID, helplessly cataloguing the contours of his profile, the reflections of the city light over his pale skin. KID hadn’t replaced his monocle, didn’t seem to be wearing latex, and even distorted by shadows the glut of data made Shinichi dizzy. With the memory of his oversight fresh in his mind, he thought wildly that KID looked a bit like <em>him</em>.</p><p>It was shockingly comfortable, feeling his thirst for information alongside the conviction that none of it could change what he already knew to be true.</p><p>“Shinichi, I’m not saying <em>no</em>,” KID went on softly, eliciting a shiver with the name. “I think we both know we have the abilities to make this work, if we decide to. For a while, at least. I guess I’m saying… if you don’t mind, then how can I?”</p><p>That wasn’t what Shinichi had expected. Surely, it was the other way around.</p><p>“I’m not sure you <em>are</em> seeing me,” he said. “And—I tried to put you in jail <em>this morning!</em>”</p><p>“And I would have been most disappointed if you hadn’t,” said KID. The expression on his face was some how both playful and totally sincere. “I’m not sure you understand the mind of a phantom thief, Shinichi. If you want me to object to you, what we did this morning isn’t exactly your best line of attack. <em>You</em> made my show truly spectacular. As to the other…”</p><p>Twisting and looking over the rooftop, KID gestured at the opposite corner and made an unnervingly convincing firework <em>pop!</em></p><p>“That was the first and last time I’ve ever seen Edogawa Conan.”</p><p>Was that really possible? KID was a master of disguise, certainly, but for Shinichi’s body truly not to perturb him… could anyone be so perceptive of the truth, yet simultaneously so able to ignore the physical reality? That was more than Shinichi had ever thought to wish for, much less hope. After several seconds, it occurred to him that he’d stopped breathing.</p><p>“You’re crazy,” he gasped.</p><p>KID swirled a gloved finger at his temple. “Guilty as charged!”</p><p>He laughed, yet the mad grin still seemed sharper than it ought. More edged.</p><p>“I could hardly <em>mind</em> you, KID,” Shinichi told him warmly. But this, somehow, was the wrong thing to say; KID’s expression turned wry and his voice tart.</p><p>“Who doesn’t love a pleasant surprise?”</p><p>It was the faint acerbic lingering over the word <em>surprise </em>that finally explained things to Shinichi. He hadn’t been listening for it earlier, but now he could hear the theme running through KID’s reluctance: <em>for a while; predictable; but I am a thief</em>… which had been followed by the silent corollary <em>and this is what thieves do</em>. The unspoken <em>so don’t expect too much of me</em>. If KID had been worried about scaring Shinichi off, he never would have offered him the choice he had at the heist, but if he were afraid instead of drawing him in.… The Kaitou KID never, ever took things he couldn’t give back. No matter what he wanted.</p><p>As he had done two days ago, Shinichi averted his gaze to give KID a moment of privacy to take off his masks. This was important, and he wanted the whole of KID’s focus on it. Keeping his eyes on the flickering headlights far below, Shinichi explained, “I’m not sure you understand the mind of a detective, KID. I’m not—going to lose interest the minute you run out of tricks for me to puzzle out, or whatever you’re picturing. If I only solved crimes for the novelty of it, I would have stopped <em>years</em> ago. And I’m not aiming at some ridiculous quota, either.”</p><p>His exhalation was lost to the evening wind as it began to pick up. The traffic signal at the intersection turned blue. Still no reply came.</p><p>“You were right about how we met,” Shinichi tried again. “It was fun shooting at some thief I’d never seen, but… I found you much more interesting up close. And I still do.”</p><p>Silence, for another beat.</p><p>“<em>You’re </em>crazy,” said KID earnestly.</p><p>“Didn’t I already confess that a couple days ago?”</p><p>It wasn’t especially funny—wasn’t even really a joke—but KID began to snicker, and when he broke into real, full-throated laughter, there could be no hope for Shinichi’s restraint. The sound of happy relief poured from both of them for the simple reason that it felt <em>good</em> to understand one another at last. <em>Complicated</em> didn’t have to mean anything more than they let it.</p><p>“I must say,” KID managed, getting his high spirits under control for a breath, “I was rather surprised to hear the <em>detective</em> confessing to the <em>thief</em>…”</p><p>“Well, you did <em>catch</em> me that night…”</p><p>The second burst of laughter was a little easier, a little softer. When peace naturally fell between them, that was easy too. KID tilted Shinichi’s face up with a touch.</p><p>“In that case, Shinichi, I suppose I’m saying <em>yes</em>.”</p><p>Anticipation was nothing to the real electric vibrancy of that word, half again as strong as the name. KID’s smile was open and unaffected now, and Shinichi returned it helplessly, for once not even considering what the emotion would look like on Conan’s face.</p><p>No one was there to see it, after all.</p><p>“Thank you,” Shinichi breathed</p><p>“Wha—don’t thank me for <em>that</em>, you absurd—“</p><p>“I’m not.”</p><p>KID’s expression turned fond, and the violet in his eyes glinted as he looked down.</p><p>“If <em>that’s</em> all you want,” he said lightly, “I’d be happy to provide my <em>unique worldview</em> at any time you might require.”</p><p>Shinichi smiled again, and said, “It’s not.”</p><p>Another shiver skimmed over Shinichi’s back, unpleasant, and he discovered belatedly that not <em>all</em> the bright tension he’d been feeling came from KID. Time was passing more quickly than he’d observed. With the sun had gone most of the day’s warmth, and likewise its mildness; the cool evening would terminate in a cold night. On the rooftop, the wind was much higher than it had been down at street level.</p><p>“Come here, Shinichi,” said KID, apparently observing the same thing. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that <em>everyone</em> dress for nighttime altitude weather.… <em>There</em>.”</p><p>When Shinichi had shifted near enough to lean against KID’s larger, warmer frame, KID produced in a swirl what could only be the cape from his costume. Broad white silk, smooth as water, warm as good tea from the heat of KID’s body. To keep his silhouette from looking bulky, it could only have been stored right beside his skin. He wrapped it tightly around both of them, and for several minutes, Shinichi only breathed deep and soaked in the drowsy heat.</p><p>“Thank you,” he said eventually.</p><p>“Oh, not again. Bringing you in close like this, it’s really <em>terribly</em> selfish,” KID insisted.</p><p>“Is it?”</p><p>“Of course it is! Tell me more about how <em>interesting</em> I am!”</p><p>Shinichi laughed contentedly. By that lilting tone of voice, he knew without looking that KID had restored some of his defensive poker face—now not so much a shield as a sealant, meant to keep more of his rare vulnerability from leaking out. Yet with the settled calm between them, the idea didn’t distress Shinichi as it might have before. In fact, he couldn’t bring himself to feel KID’s reserve as a loss at all. He just yawned.</p><p>KID wasn’t comfortable opening any more of himself tonight, but that wasn’t the end of things. It wasn’t even the end of tonight. And Shinichi was inside the shelter, this time.</p><p>With a teasing note of his own, Shinichi said to him, “Do you mean the way you used a flash bomb to make everyone think the world had gotten darker? You didn’t <em>really</em> expect me not to notice when the afterimage started to fade away, did you?” A playfully injured noise came from KID. He jabbed again, “Or maybe you mean the fact that you used two wire jumps in the same heist, even after you baited me about repeating tricks—“</p><p>“I don’t <em>never</em> repeat tricks! It’d hardly be creative work if I copied myself <em>all</em> the time, but for very rare, <em>special occasions</em>…”</p><p>“Yet you’ve repeated at least <em>twice </em>in front of me.”</p><p>“Do you feel special?”</p><p>Shinichi flushed deeply. “I—I’m still working on how you managed to get the birds to play along. Not all of them were your doves, and seagulls aren’t exactly team players…”</p><p>“Will you be looking into bird keeping, then?” KID asked with delight.</p><p>“Obviously, if I’m really going to apprehend you,” Shinichi said, meaning both <em>understand</em> and <em>arrest</em>. He relished the way KID’s arm tightened around him, almost imperceptibly. “But it seems I don’t need to do <em>much</em> research, since doves are happy to be kept on top of my head.”</p><p>“Mmh, that’s just Kashikoi.”</p><p>“What’s clever?”</p><p>“The dove, of course.” There was a smile in KID’s voice. “You’ve met before, quite some time ago now… I do appreciate you looking after her for me! And so does she.” He paused, as though weighing something in his mind. “If you ever need me, just let Kashikoi know. She’s gotten very attached, likes to roost on your agency building.”</p><p>That was touching, on a couple of levels. A way to keep in touch—though surely someone like KID, with KID’s life, couldn’t be always at home. Did KID <em>have</em> a home?</p><p>“How can you be sure she’ll know where to find you?” Shinichi asked.</p><p>“Trade secrets, Meitantei!” KID complained. “What happened to your research? You’ll get a terrible smudge on your professional record if you neglect it.”</p><p>“Asking questions <em>is </em>my profession, thief,” said Shinichi, yawning.</p><p>“And not answering them is mine!”</p><p>That was… not strictly incorrect. “Well, you won’t have to worry about job security, at least.”</p><p>“I won’t,” said KID cheerfully. “If I might return the favor—“</p><p>“Job security is the <em>least</em> of my problems.”</p><p>“—all dove messages aside, I’m around more often than you might observe.”</p><p>Shinichi <em>was </em>crazy, to go warm like this over the idea of a thief’s surveillance. Yet he couldn’t regret the feeling when it meant that KID would stay close, would look out for him when he needed it, would give Shinichi that many more chances to catch him out. <em>Can you spot the thief? </em>he thought with an amused yawn—it sounded almost like a game. On the other hand… something about the turn of the conversation sounded to Shinichi rather like <em>Call me</em>.</p><p>“KID, you say that like it’s a goodbye,” he said warily.</p><p>“No, not quite. It’s an <em>I think it’s about time to get you home</em>. Surely you’ve noticed how tired you are?” KID said, sounding faintly, fondly incredulous, and not letting go his warm grip. “You’ve yawned four times in the last seven minutes, Shinichi. I suppose it’s my fault you’ve had about three days today, but still…”</p><p>Feeling that truth made Shinichi’s stomach sink. It wasn’t late by the clock, but between his smaller size, the early hour he’d awoken and the day he’d had, and knowing how much work he’d have the next day—his body needed sleep. Without an emergency to drive him on, he did have limits. But surely he wasn’t <em>quite </em>there yet.</p><p>Stubbornly, Shinichi stifled the next yawn and said, “I don’t want to leave.”</p><p>“I think you do,” KID replied. When Shinichi snorted, KID only pressed on in the same fond tone, “Well, I think you <em>would</em>, if you weren't too tired to notice what my opposite hand has been doing ever since you started yawning.”</p><p>Shinichi jolted up. Before he could turn and search for himself, KID huffed a laugh and showed him: an assortment of straps and a light metal frame, intricately interconnected. The kind of thing that would certainly have made a racket of clicking and rustling if anyone but KID had been assembling it. The kind of thing that certainly <em>wouldn’t</em> slip under clothes as the cape might.</p><p>“Where were you keeping that?” he demanded.</p><p>KID just smiled.</p><p>“What are you planning to do with it?”</p><p>The smile widened.</p><p>And then Shinichi looked back down at the cape, still wrapped around the two of them, and it clicked.</p><p>“That’s not a glider, is it?”</p><p>“Would you like to leave as I arrived?” KID asked. Shinichi stared at him, hardly knowing how he could speak so clearly around the radiant grin that threatened to split his face. It had to be another one of those <em>trade secrets</em>.</p><p>“Really?” he said dumbly.</p><p>KID leaned over him and gestured one arm out wide, encompassing the whole of Tokyo and the star-flecked velvet sky above. He whispered in Shinichi’s ear, “Beautiful, hm? Wouldn’t you like to try it, just once, when we’re not in mortal peril?”</p><p>And there was only one answer Shinichi could give to that.</p><p>He shivered a little when he stood up, but chill and tiredness were both forgotten as he watched KID put his glider back together. KID’s movements were so practiced, and his white wing so cleanly designed, that everything he did looked easy—and yet when Shinichi looked at the cohesive whole, he couldn’t seem to remember how the cape and frame had come together. The straps, he thought, looked a little different than usual, and when KID buckled them on he realized why.</p><p>New straps of webbing had been affixed, similar to the harness but not contiguous, and sized for a much smaller person. It looked as though KID had woven them together himself.</p><p><em>So there’s seven minutes</em>, Shinichi thought. Aloud, he said, “You didn’t plan this?”</p><p>“Not exactly,” KID admitted. “But I was hopeful enough to bring the webbing, and I was thinking… well. <em>Step right up</em>, Meitantei, if you would—“</p><p>KID knelt to level their heights, and Shinichi took the invitation to move close into his space, shivering once more as he turned and felt the intense heat of KID’s chest just centimeters from his back. KID’s hands on the straps were as delicate as his quick-change had been two days ago, but the light touch felt more intense, now, knowing that KID felt it too. It lingered even when he was done.</p><p>“You’re all set, Shinichi,” KID murmured over his shoulder. “I’ve constructed the harness so you can watch the city below us, but if you shift your weight to the left—“ Shinichi did, and abruptly found himself facing KID, but no less secure. “Tada! I need my hands more for steering in urban spaces, so, in case of emergency, et cetera, et cetera… and if your hands get <em>too</em> cold, my jacket pockets have heating packs!”</p><p>“Limbs inside the vehicle?” Shinichi said, raising an eyebrow. KID just smiled brightly, spun him back around, and stepped out into the sky.</p><p>“Something like that!”</p><p>Shinichi’s answering shout was lost to the wind.</p><p>And the wind caught them.</p><p>And the sky opened wide.</p><p>And in a skipped heartbeat, Shinichi knew that he had never <em>truly</em> flown before.</p><p>Falling by parachute, paragliding, being carried to safety on KID’s own glider—all of them were pale shadows of this flight. It wasn’t the control. It didn’t even <em>feel</em> like control. Together they responded to the air currents, they shifted their weight into the wind, they banked a turn to gaze out over the city lights… KID’s skill was beyond skill, as though soaring were easier and more natural than walking, and Shinichi had just never known it before. He never doubted or wondered how to move, because through KID he could discern everything. He could read them both, KID and the wind, through their flight. It was incomparable.</p><p>If this was how <em>goodbye </em>felt, he didn’t think he ever wanted it to end.</p><p>They circled the Haido City Hotel moving east, slipping between tall buildings and tracing the shimmering lines of cars headed home for the night. When they came on the deep, reflective darkness of the river they followed it for a while, dipping low and then lower than Shinichi would have thought safe on his own; and he knew without asking that KID was thinking of how <em>exciting</em> it had been to face one another this morning. Was that why KID had wanted to fly together? Shinichi was thinking of it, too. They both laughed when the wind changed and they rose on an updraft, rose until they’d reached and then surmounted the skyscrapers.</p><p>And <em>this</em>, Shinichi understood, was where KID truly loved to fly. Up above the city, flight seemed effortless and endless—a collection of unhurried turns and glides that wandered over slow lattices of light far below—but that sense of speed was deceptive. Kilometers slipped away, and almost before he knew it Shinichi was recognizing the buildings and streets of Beika far below. It felt too soon. Too soon, and yet any moment now they’d be descending toward the Kudou house.</p><p><em>Just a little longer</em>, he asked silently.</p><p>As if in answer, the glider began to climb.</p><p>It wasn’t like the gentle updraft. The rooftops shrank away and the bite of cold set in, and still their flight ascended steeply. Shinichi read <em>reluctance</em> without knowing why. And then, abruptly, KID rolled the glider on its back and knocked the breath hard from his lungs.</p><p>He sucked in icy air, bracing, as he found the white wing steady between the two of them and the world below, and nothing but sky and glittering stars above. They were beautiful, and yet somehow wistful. So many patterns of constellations disappeared into the city light pollution, even on such a clear night. Even when KID had blocked out the city with his glider. Shinichi felt warm to the core when KID’s arms came tight around him, but not to the extremities.</p><p><em>Of course</em>. It hadn’t been an answer; it was KID, asking the same question.</p><p>And Shinichi would find the answer for them both.</p><p>Carefully he shifted his weight left, turning back over to face KID and tuck tingling fingers into his warm pockets to thaw. He saw the blankness of KID’s face, felt the tightness of his grip. KID had wanted to show him the joy of true flight, but no less had he wanted to prolong their last minutes together. Both of them were clinging, Shinichi sensed—too hard to inhale, or to breathe out again when they had. Too tightly.</p><p>“Shinichi,” KID said, so quiet his voice might have been the wind.</p><p>“KID,” he whispered. “Let go.”</p><p>There were no misunderstandings between them anymore. The glider started to descend as KID went limp, but it was inconceivable to fear falling together; all tension fell away into the dark and a grasp became an embrace. Weightless, they kissed, Shinichi firm and overeager as a man who never wanted it to end, KID fierce and lingering as though he already wanted the next. Shinichi withdrew only so they could meet again.</p><p>Their second kiss was better, and finally it made sense why <em>goodbye</em> felt this way.</p><p>When they separated they still held one another, and Shinichi tucked his face comfortably into KID’s chest to drink a last draught of his warmth as freefall gentled into an easy glide. Three times they circled to lose altitude before KID needed his hands again; he was savoring this, too. But the desperation had evaporated. They knew each other, they chose each other, and they only wondered—what would a second <em>tonight</em> be like?</p><p>By the time KID had alighted on the sill of the window and set about untying the straps connecting them, Shinichi knew the right farewell.</p><p>“You’ll have to come play soccer soon,” he said, as the webbing vanished and KID bent to pick the window’s lock. “<em>Really</em> play, I mean.”</p><p>“As Shinichi-niichan?”</p><p>“<em>Ha</em>. Not even close.”</p><p>The window clicked and swung open. Shinichi accepted KID’s hand through into his room, then looked back up and caught his breath. KID was a clean, elegant silhouette against the night, and his true crescent grin was glinting bright.</p><p>“Ah, well,” he returned slyly. “I’ll just slip into someone more suitable then, shall I?”</p><p><em>Almost like a game</em>… Shinichi smirked back.</p><p>“I’ll see you then.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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